Letting off a little steam here, but curious if others feel similarly. I've been in tech for five years now, in Facebook and another big tech co. My thoughts about working in it are becoming increasingly negative: - I don't care about the stuff most people/teams/companies work on in tech. Photo sharing? Office productivity app? Next generation databases? Really couldn’t care less if none of these existed at all. - The industry is really demanding on time and energy. I want to enjoy many more aspects of life than thinking how to optimize a database query. I’m also personally competitive and the carrot-stick environment feeds it. - The sense of superiority all around makes me feel equally conceited. “We move fast”, “we hire the best”, “our X is the fastest”. - The whole ecosystem is a game that benefits investors and the higher ups. I have no desire to be either. I don’t want to do the next big thing with 99.5% chance of failure, just so some investor can have 1 unicorn out of 200 start ups. - The theory that software can scale value across many people dilutes what I actually see in people enjoying the software. Users are just numbers when it’s all about scale (and profit). I’ve been thinking of doing my own thing for a while. Not a start up that takes funding, but a one man shop in a market with a deliberately low revenue upperbound to avoid shitstorms. I want to make things for myself, for people whose faces I can see, who value what I make, and who I share the same values or interests with. I don’t want a career trajectory, but more days a week to read more, exercise more, volunteer more, teach more, explore hobbies, travel more.
Do what you love. Always.
He is not burnt out. He sees this rat race before most of us. This industry artificially creates the need and then makes products to fulfill that need and then the next one. I have a feeling he is not America born.
Indeed I was not born here. The more time I spend living in this country, the more foreign it seems to me.
As someone who was born here, I can honestly say the same
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Well said!!
it's not the tech industry you are describing, but the white collar career path. either go blue collar and have more time, less stress/money, or go "no collar" and follow your passions.
one day if I make several millions, I want to go to a distant place and do farming, live a self sufficient simple life. but I don't know, doing that I may start liking the material life so keeping those millions as backup :D
Tech could be fun, especially combined with research science: biomed, space. It is the capitalism which turns everything into a rat race. One could find a happy German or Scandinavian engineer who doesn't work that hard and doesn't mind paying high taxes. To each his own.
I hear ya...everyday I'm one step closer to moving to a farm in NZ ;) #hobbitlife
Man New Zealand is really nice. If I were to move to an English speaking country that's laid back, not too expensive, and had temperate weather, New Zealand would be it.
oh I thought they were expensive. western Canada is my current choice
Agreed. W. Canada is fantastic.
and unlike here, I can get some peace from all the immigration hassles and become a citizen before I get too old :p
You sound burnt out. Definitely take a break, regroup, and go after what will make you happy (which is what's most important).